


Just a Few Years Ago

by unholygrass



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Sibling Bonding, Young Characters, being a kid is hard, young!Matt, young!pidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 18:05:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10791897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unholygrass/pseuds/unholygrass
Summary: Katie hates school. Matt cheers her up.





	Just a Few Years Ago

**Author's Note:**

> once again, just fluff. I like writing younger characters sometimes. I'm considering making this multiple chapters involving all of the paladins with separate stories from their childhoods, but I haven't decided yet.

She fucking hated this place.

 

She hated every single thing about it.

 

She hated the disgusting bathrooms and the different rules and the way that when it rained all the entry mats would be so bogged down by slush and disgustingness that they dripped water throughout the hallway.

 

Katie hated this fucking place.

 

She let her pencil drop to the desk from where she was balancing it on her upper lip with a soft clatter, her eyes trained on one of the scientific posters that she had read over a thousand times. It rested above the whiteboard some six feet in the air, curling at the edges from the stiffing humidity that would fill the room when it rained. It was browned a little, and Katie suspected it must have been left in the sun some summer after being put away for storage. She hated it. She hated that after staring at it for months she knew exactly what kind of rocks were based on their makeup.

 

She shuffled her feet some, her toes only barely scraping the threadbare carpet beneath her. Did the people who bought chairs for schools not realize that they were small? Did that information escape them entirely? She should not have to _hop_ into her fucking seat... though... when she looked at her classmates, she realized she might be the only one in the room with that problem. The boys were still small, but many of the other girls had begun their growth spurts- some of them shooting past her by several inches.

 

She hated the 5th grade.

 

Her teacher was drilling long division into the other kids' heads, but she found that her brain was going to focus on nothing except for the way her teacher's Ws seemed to be made of two extra syllables. She still had not completely discovered how the woman could turn “white” into “wHeite”. It was fascinating. And annoying.

 

The other kids kept asking questions, preventing her teacher from passing out the packet of worksheets that she was going to have to convince herself to do. They only had seventeen minutes before lunch, and if he passed them out now, she could probably manage to get at least three pages done- more time to herself when sh got home.

 

Her hopes were crushed when Mrs. Rothfuss put another example question on the board. She groaned quietly, and completely to herself thank you very much, but her teacher had caught it anyway. Old bat still had bat-like hearing.

 

“Miss Holt, if you don't think you need any more practice with your peers, how about you come to the board and complete this problem for us. Surely if it is something to groan about, then you must already have this skill understood.”

 

God, the lady could be a bitch, but Katie still found herself respecting her. Her completely inappropriate make and dress aside, the lady had a way of striking fear through her. She wasn't afraid to humiliate her in front of the entire class, and she had already received two calls home to her parents revolving around her “backtalk” and “sass”. One more slip up and she was going to start really getting into trouble.

“Oh.” twenty-six sets of eyes stared her down in her seat, as though she had just murdered a man in front of them all. She felt heat rise to her cheeks. Thankfully, living with an older brother and unrestricted internet access meant she was very good at making excuses on the fly. “I actually just ran out of lead. That's why I groaned. Not at you. Sorry.”

 

Her teacher seemed to accept this explanation, but then turned the situation back around on her by addressing the class again. “Does any one have a pencil that Katie may borrow?” Unsurprisingly, the room was met with suffocating silence. She wasn't in a large school, and she knew damn well that none of her classmates were willing to do anything for her. Not even the ones who had spent the night at her house on her birthday and had made secret clubs and friendship pacts with her. Not the ones she had been forced to socialize with because her parents knew theirs, or the ones who she joked with when she got on the bus.

 

Sometimes she had friends, but sometimes she did not.

 

“Oh! Found some. I have some. Thanks though.” Katie's voice was a little rushed and maybe a little more panicked than usual, but that was okay. Whatever it took to get the attention off of her and back onto their fucking lesson. It was bad enough knowing your friends usually didn't want anything to do with you. It was something completely different being left out to dry when the teacher asks for a simple favor in your honor.

 

Sure enough, Mrs. Rothfuss turned back to the whiteboard and began walking through the problem again, and the twenty-five sets of eyes were no longer pinning her to the wall.

 

Fifteen minutes until lunch. She could survive another fifteen minutes of useless droning on.

 

…............................

 

She left her lunch at home.

 

She left her stupid lunch at home, and that meant eating the school's disgusting excuse for chicken and a dollop of mashed potatoes would have to be the only thing she ate until she got home at three.

 

She was going to starve.

 

….......................................

 

School was stupid, but she could see how it was beneficial. She could learn everything she needed to know online, but school did force her to get along with other people, and she was sure that that would be important when she was older. It also meant that she got to use the school library- and that was probably really the only reason she didn't curse the entire building altogether.

 

 

The library was old and had a ceiling clearance of about three feet. It smelled of musk and mold and _books._ Every now and again they would have to close it down because the mold would be back, but she usually just snuck back in when that happened. When it was up and running though, she treasured the time she got once a week to escape her obnoxiously loud classmates and roam over the titles from A to Z. Her previous teachers had scolded her when she had wandered into sections that were considered above her reading level, claiming that she needed to continue reading at the same rate as the rest of her classmates, but thankfully the librarian was much more understanding. He was always ready for her with new titles that he thought she may enjoy, and he was never afraid to recommend books that were out of her normal interest zone- usually of which she still found fascinating. When she asked about it, he would always say that no information was useless, and that it was always a good thing to broaden her horizons. He was also very good at not tattling on her when she stayed in the library for longer than she was technically allowed- such as today.

 

She was crouched in one of the library's stiff plastic chairs, and she could hear him typing away at his computer where he usually worked. He had mentioned once that he was also a college professor, and that he was often working on assignments for his students. Over time, she had found the sound of his typing away at the keys was one of the most comforting sounds that existed at school.

 

She found that she much preferred staying inside with Mr. Finch while the other kids wrestled for the honor of kickball captain at recess. So long as she told her teacher that she was only going inside to grab her coat, she would have thirty minutes of uninterpreted time to herself. She had flown through four chapters of her book before the bell rang and she knew that she would be expected in class or she would be in trouble. She did not bother to smother her groan this time, and she could hear the smile in Mr. Finch's voice when he spoke to her.

 

“Back to the drone of classes mm Miss Holt?” He looked up briefly from his screen to watch her unfold herself from her chair and wander back over to him.

 

“Yeah.” She stepped up to his desk and handed the book to him to scan. “I don't think I've returned _The Invisible Man_ yet.”

 

“I know, but I trust that you will return both.” He hit the computer keys a few more times before handing it back to her. “Have a good day Mrs. Holt.”

 

The library was always her favorite place.

 

…...................................

 

While she could see the few advantages to forcing kids to go to school, she could not, for the life of her, understand why adults thought that PE was a good thing to force them to do. When she wanted to do physical activity, she would- and she would _never_ want to do physical activity in front of a bunch of judgmental classmates who could not give her the time of day.

 

She was fairly confident that she was the smartest kid in her class, but she was also pretty sure that she was the most nonathletic kid too.

 

She was fast as hell, but she couldn't kick a ball to the ceiling or swing a bat and send a ball into outer space. She was sure that if it really came down to it, she could probably keep up pretty well with her peers, but she wasn't very good at the team sports that they were forced to participate in when it came to PE.

 

Not to mention that all the teams were decided by popularity- and while she always told herself that she did not care what her classmates thought of her, it was always a partial lie. There was nothing pleasant about being left as the last kid left over when all the other kids had been picked to participate on teams. Especially when the team that you eventually got stuck with _complained_ that they were stuck with you.

 

And the teacher acted like she couldn't hear it.

 

She'd rater be reading anyway.

 

….................................................

 

There was always a certain amount of relief that came with boarding her bus to go home. Her bother always made sure that she was alive and getting on the same bus as him, but he was usually caught up with his friends until it came time for their stop a few blocks from their house. She didn't mind, and she usually didn't try to butt in. She knew he wouldn't complain, but he was six years older than her, and some of his friends could be intimidating, even though she knew they were all probably very similar to her brother.

 

She hefted her battered backpack onto her shoulders as the bus slowed down with a squeal of its breaks, and had to steady herself on the back of one of the seats as the it lurched forward harshly. They were the only ones to get off the bus at their stop, and when she saw her brother stumble out after her she started up on the sidewalk, determined to get a headstart on him. He always managed to make her race after him because his legs were so much longer than hers. She knew she would get her growth spurt on him eventually.

 

“Woah! Where're you off to? A race? Are you racing me Pigeon?”

 

He had appeared at her side a moment later, and despite her sour mood, she felt herself trying not to smile at him. “No. Just wanna get home.”

 

He hummed. “Bad day?'”

 

“I hate school.”

 

“I know.”

 

She kicked at some stray rocks on their path, purposefully weaving around mud and slamming her shoulder into her brother's side in the process.

 

….........................................

 

He finds her sitting in her room later, laying on her bed with a book open, but the sun had set too far for her to possibly be able to read, and she hasn't bothered turning on her lights. Purple shadows inched up the walls of her bedroom, weaving in time with the trees outside.

 

“Are you just sitting in the dark?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Well, come sit in the dark in my room.”

 

She lies motionless for a few seconds, and he can see her turning the idea over in her mind. Then-

 

“Alright.”

 

….....................................

 

She's bundled up on his bed in his comforter, and he's seated at his computer station, dual monitors displaying a League of Legends game and a brightly colored mechanical keyboard clacking beneath his fingers as he shouts through the microphone at his buddies that live hundreds of miles away. True to his word, the lights are off, and bright glow of the screens illuminates the room in a blue glow. She's surprisingly content to sit and watch him play and listen to his friend's banter. They're cussing each other out now, talking about stats and Rp, but she can see the smile on Matt's face. Their parents would be working late- they had called earlier to tell Matt to order pizza and not to bid them both a goodnight with the promise to give them hugs before school in the morning.

 

Matt had sprung for her favorite pizza place, and she sat comfortable on the bed with a full belly and warm heavy limbs. Their family dog came wandering in eventually, and after circling Matt's chair a few times, the bull terrier jumped onto the bed to nudge and worm his way against Katie's side, plopping down with a soft sigh and tucking her heavy head on the girl's stomach.

 

School was awful, but going back home to recharge made it much ore bearable.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please review!


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